Mated To The Alpha Triplets (SPICY)

CASSIDY’S POV The locker smelled like metal and old sweat. I felt like I was going to be sick. I pressed both palms flat against the cold steel door, trying my best to breathe. I breathed slowly, through the nose, out through the mouth. That's what my mother always told me to do when the walls felt like they were moving. Breathe, Cassie. Just breathe. But the walls were moving or at least, they felt like they were. The space was barely wide enough to hold a backpack and I was folded into it like a piece of paper someone didn't want anymore. My shoulder was jammed against the shelf. My knees were bent at an angle that was already starting to ache. The darkness pressed in from every side. I hated the dark. I hated small spaces more. There was a reason for that but I refused to think about it now. "Kenny." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. "Kenny, open the door. Please." I heard people laughing. "Did she say please?" That was Marco, one of Kenny's boys "Awww. That's cute." "Kenny." I kept my voice level. I wouldn’t beg. I told myself that firmly. I wouldn’t beg. "I don't do well in tight spaces. You know that. Just let me out and we can talk." "We can talk fine like this." Kenny's voice came through the door. His voice was smooth, like he had all the time in the world. He probably did. People like Kenny Draven always did. Time bent around them. Rules bent around them. Everything bent around them because his father was Alpha Draven, the most powerful wolf in the pack, and Kenny had inherited every ounce of that entitlement without earning a single piece of it. I pressed my forehead against the door and closed my eyes. The darkness behind my eyelids was better than the darkness of the locker. At least, it was my own. "Someone's been talking," Kenny said “Running their mouth all over the academy about things that aren't any of their business." My stomach dropped. I knew what this was about. I had known for days now. I felt it the moment I stepped onto academy grounds three weeks ago and my chest had done something it had never done before – I felt a pull, deep inside me aimed directly at Kenny Draven. My wolf - the wolf I didn't have, the wolf that was supposed to be there and wasn't - had stirred for the first time in my life. True mate. Kenny and I were mates. I hadn't told a single soul. I had swallowed it down and kept my head low. I went about my life exactly as I always did, keeping myself invisible because telling anyone would have been catastrophic. I was Cassidy Storm. My father was a disgraced Beta, banished from the pack three years ago for allegedly trying to assassinate Alpha Draven. We lived on the edge of pack territory in a house that was barely a house. My mother worked as a maid in the Alpha's castle just to keep us fed. I didn't even have a wolf. I was wolfless, the lowest of the low, a joke people told at parties. And Kenny Draven was the heir. Telling anyone I was his true mate would have been like painting a target on my back in bright red paint and handing people stones to throw. So, I hadn't told anyone. But someone had found out or guessed or made it up. "I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "No?" The lock rattled "So you didn't tell anyone you're my true mate?" "No." "You sure about that, Cassidy?" "I'm sure." "She's lying." A girl said. Celeste Morrow. Of course, Celeste was here. She was always where Kenny was. "She obviously started it herself. Who else would?" "I didn't-" "Who else even knows Kenny?" Celeste scoffed "You don't have friends, Cassidy. You don't have anything. The only reason anyone is talking about you is because you made them." "Someone started the rumor," Kenny said. "And it wasn't me, and it wasn't Celeste, and it sure wasn't any of my boys because none of them want anything to do with a wolfless girl from a traitor's family. So that leaves you." "It doesn't leave me. Someone could have sensed something. Wolves sense these things." I kept my voice steady "I didn't spread anything. I didn't tell anyone." "Funny." He said. "Because the whole school is talking about how the great Kenny Draven is stuck with the traitor's wolfless daughter as a mate. That's the specific rumor. Word for word. And you think someone just sensed that?" I didn't answer. There was nothing to say that he would believe. "Here's what's going to happen," Kenny said. "There's a speaker at the end of this hall. I'm going to patch you through to it and you're going to tell everyone who's listening exactly what happened." My chest tightened. "Kenny-" "You started the rumor because you're a sad, desperate girl with no wolf and no future and you thought latching onto my name would give you something. That's what you're going to say. Then you're going to say it's not true, that you made it up for attention, that you're sorry." "That's not-" "Or you stay in there. Your choice." If I had my wolf, I wouldn't be here. A wolf gave you strength. I could have broken the lock. I could have shoved the door off its hinges with one good hit. I could have done what any normal werewolf girl would do and gotten myself out. But I didn't have her. I never had. My wolf had never come, not on my twelfth birthday when everyone else shifted for the first time, not in the months after when late bloomers started coming into their power. She just wasn't there. I was the weakest person in this pack and Kenny knew it. He had always known it. "Fine," I said. The word tasted like ash. "Fine. I'll say it." The lock clicked. The door opened. Light poured in and I stumbled out, blinking hard. Kenny stood in front of me with his arms crossed. He was dressed in an expensive leather jacket. His dark hair was perfect. He was dangerously handsome. Behind him stood Marco and two other boys whose names I had never bothered to learn, and beside Kenny, close enough to touch, Celeste glared at me. She was wearing a dress that cost more than my mother made in a month. I was in my school uniform, the one I had saved up for. It was the only decent piece of clothing I owned. Kenny held out a small speaker-link device. I took it. "I started the rumor," I said into it. "About being Kenny Draven's true mate. I made it up because I wanted attention." The words felt like swallowing glass. "It isn't true. I'm sorry for the trouble it caused." Silence in the hall. Then a few murmurs. Someone laughed. Kenny took the device back. "See?" He tucked the device away. "That wasn't hard." I didn't say anything. I just looked at the floor, waiting for this all to be over. Kenny nodded to Marco. I didn't understand what the nod meant until Marco stepped forward with a bucket. Marco poured the contents on top of my head. I gasped in shock. The paint hit me full in the chest. The liquid was cold and thick. The red liquid dripped from my collar, from my sleeves, off the hem of my skirt onto the floor. My uniform. My only good uniform. Everyone laughed. "Clean yourself up," Kenny said behind me, already walking away. "You look like a mess." I heard Celeste's voice, lower now, meant for Kenny and not for me. "Just reject her. End it. You don't need-" "I said no." Kenny snapped. "Don't push me on this, Celeste." A pause. Then, I heard the sounds of footsteps. I stood alone in the hall with paint dripping from my hands and students walking past me. Nobody looked at me. They never did. Looking at me too long was bad luck in this pack, the same way touching a broken thing was bad luck. Slowly, I walked to the bathroom at the end of the hall. I told myself it would be alright. I almost believed it.